Ukraine will not settle for a ceasefire and a peace treaty. Russia must be held responsible for unleashing war and genocide against Ukrainians

Yuri Maznychenko 17 March 2022

The Ukrainian people are not accustomed to choosing the lesser of two evils. And also to have a short memory and give a second, third and God knows what chance to people whose reputation in a civilized country would have long ago been marked with a tombstone. It is an open Ukrainian soul: our people are friendly, hospitable and by their nature naive and kind.

Our enemies, who tried to take possession of our fertile soil, rich subsoil and hardworking people, took advantage of this more than once. Separated by different states, Ukrainians have patiently endured disasters and tragedies, until in 2014 it has been enough for millions of people, and in 2022 the whole country finally realized - only we ourselves should take responsibility for the protection of our territories and beliefs.

It is time for Ukraine to get rid of the harmful compromises that the USSR taught us. To adapt, to look for connections, not mine - not sorry - this primitivism was not a national trait of Ukrainians, who were used to getting benefits by hard work, but turned out to be implanted by the very "brotherly" people, who have been bombing our cities, destroying our homes and killing our children for more than three weeks.

Three weeks rallied the Ukrainian nation as never before, which was given the objective prerequisites to withstand the occupation invasion and finally defeat the centuries-old enemy. But a high chance of victory does not yet equal a triumphant conclusion to the war. And right now, as many of us feel exhausted by the war and search in the impenetrable darkness for even a little bit of light, the Ukrainian people risk walking twice into the same water.

Vladimir Putin's regime has finally realized that Russia will lose this war. That not even the world's second world army can defeat Ukrainian warriors with weapons. Nor does propaganda, which for eight years has indoctrinated the people of eastern Ukraine with the tale of the AFU bombing the Donetsk and Luhansk separatists, have any effect on the Ukrainians. But Ukraine is dealing with the Russian FSS, who, like the sneaky Mr. Fix from the famous cartoon "80 Days Around the World," always has a new plan.

Now the aggressors are trying to remind the good-natured Ukrainian people that vast Russia is not only the people who support Putin's government and the so-called "military special operation" in Ukraine. It is also the people who have suffered all these years from the civil and military crimes of the Russian regime, and now also have to face the inaccessibility of many benefits and the 300 rubles for dollar as the exchange rate.

Channel One News in Russia launched a girl with a poster condemning the war, which in the following hours received thousands of grateful replies from Ukrainians in Instagram. During Atalanta football match, a banner with an image of Ukrainian Ruslan Malinovskyi and Russian Alexei Miranchuk shaking hands was displayed in the stands.

For several days now, we have been reading on the Internet that journalists have been quitting en masse from the Russian media who do not want to cooperate with the authorities who have committed crimes against their own and the Ukrainian people. And before Facebook was officially shut down in Russia, the social network was full of posts by people saying that none of them ever wanted war, and only "Nazis" could gloat over the woes of peaceful Russians unable to get medicine or buy necessities.

The time for regret is over. As soon as a note of humanity begins to play in our heads, Ukraine will instantly lose the advantage, earned by blood and sweat during those difficult three weeks of the war. And betray the memory of the thousands of dead Ukrainians that the Russian army is deliberately killing. Using artillery in Kharkiv, Volnovakha, Mariupol and other cities. Shooting "green" corridors with civilians trying to escape the horrors of war. Killing those who proclaim dissent and destroying their homes in the blink of an eye.

Russia Today directly acknowledged the troops' decision to launch a missile attack on the Drama Theater in Mariupol after receiving information about "12 Azov fighters and a large number of civilians" being there. Is this the so-called "denazification" of Ukraine - to destroy indiscriminately everyone and everything?

"Why do you say you're not there yet? Katya wrote that you will be finished by March. When will you take Kyiv? Our prices are going up like in a fairy tale. Loans - 30%, mortgage - 18%, toilet bowl costs 44 thousand," - this is one of many calls intercepted by the SSU, in which the wife of a Russian soldier complains about the difficulties of life and openly wonders when the Russian army will already enter the capital of a sovereign state! And at the same time, Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov states that Russia has not attacked Ukraine and has no intention of occupying its territory.

The entire civilized world calls on Russia to stop its military aggression in Ukraine, and on March 16 the international UN court in The Hague finally gave a legal assessment of Putin's regime's three-week operation, having ordered the occupiers to stop military agression in our country.

But the Ukrainian people will not be satisfied with a cease-fire and a peace treaty. Russia must bear full responsibility for unleashing war and genocide against Ukrainians.

Russia must be held responsible for the aggression toward an independent state and rethink its geopolitical vectors. The USSR collapsed back in the last century, and Russia no longer has the right to dictate its terms to neighbouring states the way the communists in the Kremlin once did. Especially not to Ukraine, which has been an independent state for 31 years and has chosen the progressive Western path of development rather than Moscow's barbaric one with the medieval principles of life.

Russia must be held responsible for crimes against humanity. First of all, for the genocide of the Ukrainian people, which is estimated at thousands of civilian deaths. While the Russians could still cover up artillery strikes on Ukrainian military facilities with so-called "demilitarization," the massacres of Ukrainian citizens in Volnovakha, Okhtyrka, Trostyanets, and Mariupol, which violate the UN Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, must be objectively assessed by an international tribunal.

In addition, in Russia's undeclared war against Ukraine, more than 14 thousand soldiers of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation were killed, which Putin's regime ordered to be left on the battlefield. So as not to create a news contrarian with a special operation for his herd of TV zombies. The number of dead Russians is information that is classified as a state secret, because the Russian authorities are afraid of growing panic and simply do not want to pay compensation to the relatives of the dead.

Russia must be held responsible for the disfigured consciousness of millions of people and the deliberate deception of citizens in order to benefit a bunch of criminals whose actions have been condemned by the whole world. This mainly concerns children's propaganda, because the criminal regime will soon fall, and Russia may raise a new generation of neo-Nazi revanchists, who, in conditions of poverty and international isolation, risk not taking the lesson learned by the aggressor-state.

Russia must be held responsible for the material damage to Ukraine and the moral damage to Ukrainians, especially those whose loved ones were taken by this war. Each destroyed house, each destroyed road, each mutilated life must be paid from the gold and foreign currency reserves of the country that unleashed this war.

And now, most importantly. Russia must be held responsible for accepting the right to have the state and its people be hated. Ukrainians have earned the right to hate the Russians: both those who came to our land with weapons, and those who were afraid to squeak a word against Putin's power and waited for the occupiers to seize Kiev, and those who did not want war and called not to kill the "brotherly" people.

One day the Putin regime will be condemned and get what it deserves. And all those who were silently afraid of it and turned a blind eye to the policy of permissiveness will have to rebuild the new country. Russians will have to learn to take responsibility for their actions, not to become outcasts of civilization and one day get rid of the stigma against their nationality in their passports.

Ukraine is left to deprive Russia of the only possible clue if the neighbouring country ever decides to invade our land. Namely, to speak the Ukrainian language, so that the Russian horde would have no one else to "set free" but themselves.